Another icon on my kitchen wall. I'm not sure what image this is --- obviously Our Lady, but I don't know of what.
Huge storms moved through last night. A neighboring town, Cherryville, was struck by a tornado --- friends of mine live there, so that's sobering news to wake up to. Well, I see in the news that they're calling it a "possible" tornado, but power lines and trees are down, and all the schools are closed, so whatever. There seem to have been no injuries or fatalities, thankfully. We moved to North Carolina from the Mid-South, otherwise known as Tornado Alley, and it's easy to forget that in fact, they happen here, too. As it was, we did have a loud, intense thunderstorm, and I had to medicate Dora to calm her down enough to sleep.
Now the sun is out, and my husband is checking the basement to be sure the sump pump didn't expire in the night. We're supposed to have sun all day and a high of 83F --- perfect weather. And the garden did get watered without my having to water it. Today I'm going to go out and finish pruning the forsythias, to give a little better view of the house and create some separation from the redbud tree, which I also pruned yesterday, to get rid of a low branch obscuring the path to the door and raise the canopy a little generally.
In other news, here's another lesson from Nat Tucker, on the formula for an interesting outfit. It's a formula I often ignore these days, because I wear solids so steadily, but it does bear revisiting.
The formula? You've heard it before: a light, a dark, a color, and a print (or pattern).
Again, I often ignore this formula --- at least, I don't think that consciously about it. But if my necklace is always a print, then I'm a little more in business than I think, maybe.
Here's my graduation outfit from last Saturday as an example:
The dress is both a dark and a color. Shoes are dark (might have been better to wear my light-gray sandals, for contrast with my hemline, but comfort will out). My hat is light --- it was really the necessary ingredient here. The rose adds pattern, but so do my Miraculous Medal (not that visible here, but I was wearing it) and my long necklace.
Add my linen shawl, and I had another light:
Insanely simple dress. The Maggie can frankly be a tad blah on its own. But it's so easy to dress up. I felt like a million bucks in this comfortable outfit on Saturday.
Sunday's outfit works pretty well, too, on these lines:
Dark top (actually my other Maggie dress), skirt with a light background, color, and pattern. My shoes here contrast with my lowest hem, so are actually better than they were in the previous day's outfit. Again: incredibly simple and comfortable and easy, using items out of my closet.
Winter outfits always feel harder to nail. I have far more eh outfits in the winter than in the summer, when just a dress and sandals and maybe some touch like a hat or shawl or added skirt makes it. On the one hand, I enjoy the variety that layers bring. On the other, it's hard to get it all on point and still be as comfortable and warm as I want to be. I did like this ensemble, for a pub night:
The scarf, given me by my husband but seldom worn, brings both light and pattern. Denim jacket: color. Dress: dark. Boots contrast with lowest hem. Check, all of it.
This outfit in my marine-blue Maggie was a good one, too:
Light in my sweater. Subtle patterns in the beading of the sweater and the necklaces. Dark in my dress and tights. Pop of color in my shoes. Whenever I open my 2023 style album, this photo is at the top, which is maybe why my eye falls on it, but when it does, I think, yeah.
This little experiment is actually a lot more fun, I think, than I was giving it credit for at the time:
It's Camellia (last seen yesterday), with secondhand pink merino tank, secondhand cashmere cardigan, navy leggings, and Tari boots. I'm not sure how I feel about the socks I was wearing --
. . . but they do add pattern, as well as warmth. Not much in this outfit is actually light, unless you count my boots, which certainly do add contrast, or my necklace. But looking back, I kind of like the color blocking. It's a cheerful combination for the dead of winter --- and it must have been cold that day, because I wasn't wearing sandals.
Anyway. I could go on and on, but you can read Nat's short lesson and derive the same benefits, if not more.
I do ignore the shoe-contrast rule sometimes, just because Birkenstocks are what I want to wear, full stop. And the ones I have are brown. If I'm dressing up, I will put on my light-gray Xero sandals, which are bare enough to be kind of sexy, in a way that I hope makes up for the fact that they aren't heels. Or my red Mary Janes: ditto, though in their case, it's not the bareness but the fact that they're red.
Meanwhile, my new dress is out for delivery! And of course my rule for the month is to wear something blue, so I'll have to figure that out with a green dress, assuming the dress fits and is what I wear today. Lollygagging about getting dressed right now, hoping that it will just SHOW UP and I can PUT IT ON.
But eventually I am going to have to get up out this chair and assume some clothing, whether my dress is here or not.
STAY TUNED.
SLIGHTLY LATER:
Well, still no dress, but I have had to get dressed, because the police are coming. We've had someone besides wrens squatting in our laundry room overnight, as evidenced by the strong smell of . . . herbs . . . concentrated in that room, which is just a closed-in end of our back porch, readily accessible via a door that is never locked, but I guess now will be. It's not us, I assure you. I have never even so much as smoked a cigarette. And our children, whom I wouldn't have leapt to suspect in any case, are all a minimum of a thousand miles away. So . . . some stranger . . . seeking refuge in the wee hours, because my husband was up till nearly midnight and saw nothing . . . decided to camp out with my washing machine and have a little party.
Anybody who says small-town life is dull has never lived in a small town.
Meanwhile, what I put on, since I had to put on something:
Camellia again, because there she was. I'm counting this as a fourth wear, even though it might not be for long. Since was I recalling how much I liked her with a belt, and since I'd left this cork belt in the bathroom after trying it with my Pact dress on Monday, I put it on again.
For a tossed-on outfit, this isn't bad. I'll always and forever love this dress, especially in her new redyed color. And it does kind of tick the formula boxes: dress is dark and a color, belt is light, shoes create a pattern on my feet. You don't have to be all layered up to achieve those ingredients to a good outfit.
Anyway, I wasn't going to come up with a whole new thing today.
Nice young policeman. We all considered that maybe the person or persons unknown were standing under the window, which is open to let the nesting wrens in and out, and that the smoke just gathered in the enclosed space, while it dissipated everywhere else. He seemed to feel that nesting wrens in the laundry room were a normal part of everybody's household arrangements.
LATER STILL:
She's here. And with some caveats, I think she's a keeper.
First of all, the color is gorgeous. This is a green I can really wear (as opposed to all the greens I really can't wear).
The long length is pretty perfect. When the waistband settles, the hem hits just above my knee. The fit is reminiscent of everything I've come to love about my Fiona dress, but with a different bodice. It's got the same kind of fluid structure, and I love that. It feels very flattering on.
The raglan/butterfly sleeves were always my least favorite part of the design. I thought they looked kind of sloppy and oversized. But really . . . I don't mind them. They just feel, again, flowy and graceful. And the airflow in a looser sleeve will be very welcome in the summer. Today is not that hot, for example, but I was out cutting forsythia in my Camellia, and I came in bathed in sweat. After last night's storms, everything is humid and swampy. So the loose design of this dress is very welcome, as it turns out.
About that bodice . . .
On the one hand, it's really flattering.
I mean, seriously. All my ruminations on modesty and the male gaze aside . . . I love how this looks. The crossover v-neck is just insanely flattering (I know I keep saying that word, but it is).
And you know, if it would stay like this ---
--- that'd be great.
Alas, it does not.
I'm wearing, at the moment, an Allbirds bralette/crop top, which I would wear under clothes in the summer in any case. I've already made slits in both sides to insert bra pads, so it functions as a real bra, as well as a crop top. It's an XL, and I've been meaning to take the shoulders up a tad anyway to make it fit better --- which would raise its profile across the front. I have a Boody bamboo bralette which is much the same style: basically a cropped camisole. These are never quite as high in front as I would really like, but they help.
Anyway, this will be an ongoing issue . . . but I don't think it's as much of a dealbreaker as I had anticipated, mostly because I otherwise really love the dress and feel like a million bucks in it. I might eventually take a stitch in the wrap bodice to hold it in place, but maybe I won't do that. In the winter, especially, I've got these tank underlayers that seem just made to wear with this dress.
And in the summer . . . yeah, for church I will have to manage this neckline. Maybe in some other circumstances I will, too. But otherwise . . . I dunno. I am not actually, at this moment, showing any cleavage. I think it might be okay.
For reference, this dress is a small long. I might even have gone for an XS --- though that might have been pushing it! --- if they made XS long sizes in this style. The skirt might have been too tight in that case but I might have gotten a closer fit in the bodice.
BUT. This feels like far less a problem than the Sofia presented. That dress looked sloppy. This dress does not. She just looks pretty and flirty and kind of vaguely vintage. I can see her with dressier sandals, even heels. I can see her with boots and layers in the winter. I'm seeing Christmas . . . but I'm also seeing wearing her at the Summer Literary Series in Houston in July.
I also like her with this little belt pouch I bought, which adds some Marian blue and compensates for the absence of pockets:
I'm also thinking that in winter, layering her over Camellia will be a thing.
Anyway, I did NOT expect to like this dress so much. It was a gamble. This is the design I've criticized the most, for as long as I've been looking at these dresses (Fiona was probably second). Once again, I'm having some words for lunch. I'm really happy with my dress, and even given the caveat of the bodice, she is a keeper.
PS: Put on my other glasses today. Who knew how sweaty you get about the nose when wearing big plastic glasses? Not this girl, that's for sure. Also, I felt like having a face for a change, not just glasses.
PPS: I did put a tiny, tiny stitch in the crossover of this dress's wrap bodice. It doesn't show, and I can easily clip it out if I don't like it. Took about two seconds, while I was wearing the dress, and it's okay. It solves any gaping issues for now, at any rate. Clearly I am keeping the dress . . . I'm committed to her now, anyway, but then I'd already decided I was. I keep saying this, but I feel so pretty in this dress. And I am happy to have been wrong about her.